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Daily Archives: October 24, 2015

Welcome to our "Trick or Treat Blog Hop" hosted by Rachael Partlett, author of The Classroom Game Nook Blog. Rachael has organized a dynamic collection of blogs with lots of fun tricks to use in your classroom as well as some awesome treats. At every stop along the hop a blogger has featured a resource to giveaway. Be sure to enter each blogger's Rafflecopter for a chance to win some great resources. As an additional sweet treat, each blogger has posted an exclusive freebie just for you--our blog hoppers. Download them all and they are yours. (Of course, the copyright belongs to the original teacher-author). Please keep in mind that most freebies will remain free only for the duration of the Trick-or-Treat BlogHop and will convert to paid products when the blog hop is over on Halloween, October 31st. So be sure to do lots of hopping before then to grab all the freebies and enter all the giveaways.

Happy Trick-or-Treat Blog Hopping!

At the beginning of every year I would write a class list of names on a piece of graph paper with large boxes. Then I would photo the list and keep a pile of them in my side top drawer. These lists were invaluable to me every time I needed to keep track of whether each student had whatever. Who brought in money for a class trip? Who returned a permission slip? Who had a turn at the new math center? It is so easy to grab a list and just place check marks next to students' names instead of writing names on a piece of paper and then trying to figure out who is still missing. Also, every once in a while the front office or another teacher would ask for a class list. No need for any time-consuming tasks, just hand them a copy.

In my self-contained Special Ed class, I stapled a copy to the bulletin board where we did our morning routine. Every morning I would give a one-minute "news" report, about something that happened in my life since the day before i.e., made a special dinner for my family, took my kids to soccer practice, etc. Then students could volunteer to give their own news report. Everyone who gave a report colored in a square next to their name. A bar graph began to develop. Soon the most reluctant speakers, (a few in this class rarely, if ever, said a sentence aloud), wanted a colored square and were asking to give a news report. Seeing classmates be successful helped some students be willing to take a risk and participate. It was worth every second of class time. The list could be used as a quick reference for any student assessment, i.e., learning those times tables. It was a motivating factor because it was actively used each day.

The list is a small thing, but so helpful.

And about the sweet treats . . .

The FREEBIE

Click this image to see Monster Math Scoot at A+ Kids.

Monster Math Scoot is my brand new game made especially for the Trick-or-Treat blog hop. It is a 3-games-in-1 resource. The 36 cards in this game can be used as task cards, a scoot activity, or a kaboom game. The adorable monsters clip art was done by Ashley from Watson Works. Objectives are:

Know Your Math Facts is an activity to promote math fact fluency in multiplication and division. There are 120 cards in all, 30 task cards for each of the following: 1) multiplication facts for the 7, 8, and 9 times tables, 2) multiplication story problems, 3) division facts for the 7, 8, and 9 times tables, 4) division story problems.

Notice the kid on the right is using his fingers to get the answer 63.

Just for fun kids select answers to multiplication and division problems from a list on the side of the game page. Then they write one number in each bubble. As they solve the problems on the task cards, they color in the bubble if they chose to write that answer in a bubble. The game is over when one person has colored in all of his bubbles. This activity is great for differentiated instruction because the teacher can have each player choose only from the deck of cards that meet his personal objective--working on just the facts or solving story problems, multiplication or division or both. Or all of the cards can be mixed into one pile to play.

Click on the button to trick-or-treat at the next blog. Be sure to hop to every blog to collect your tricks and delicious treats. When you get back to my blog you will have completed the entire blog bop! Invite your friends to trick-or-treat here as well! Remember the fun only lasts until Halloween.